“I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life,” Virginia Woolf confessed in Moments of Being. It is how she defined her enquiring mind that actually gave birth to the finest works in British literature. During Virginia Woolf’s entire life, she was borrowing her insights and gathering her feelings from ordinary weaving people, emotions, and incidents into completely modern lines. In fact, the external daily life was ingrained in the inner flow of author’s mind. No other writer was able to react so accurately to the constant change that took place in that time. Although British literature has been made by the vast array of leading figures whose influence on its history is undeniable, Virginia Woolf remains the foremost writer of modernism who during her eclectic life had been developing as a fully-fledged woman that followed a natural urge to share a vivid perception of the world she had been living in and introduced unreserved forms of literature to the public.
In trying to find a balance between excitement and sadness in life, Virginia Woolf experienced various moments which formed her exceptional personality. On the grounds that she was the third daughter of notable Leslie and Julia Prinsep Stephen who had a direct connection to the world of literature, art, and music, Virginia Woolf was privileged to take part in cultural life from the early childhood. Frequently, artists and writers spent evenings in the house in Kensington letting the children listen to the talks of art. As a result, Virginia Woolf’s mind started forming in the atmosphere of intellectual freedom that made her imagination boundless. Her father was the author of Dictionary of National Biography while her mother was a model and nurse. They were both widowers sharing four children before the second marriage. Later, when Virginia and her siblings were born, it was decided that the girls would receive an education at home. Owing to that fact, Virginia Woolf often felt a relative lack of formal education. Though, beyond looking for personal ways of education, it helped her to understand the role of women in history and advocate for equal opportunities in order to positively change society.
Her parents might have also been the cause of her sexually polarized life. The two streams of female and male origin disturbed her harmony deeply (Showalter 265). However, Douglass W. Orr, M.D. points in his work Virginia Woolf’s Illnesses that, a few months before she committed suicide, Wolf described her childhood as an idyll (Orr 9). In such a way, she tried to separate herself from negative memories which created a serious impact on the subsequent nervous breakdowns and writer’s death. Her first major nervous breakdown happened in 1904 after the death of her father. Before, she suffered through the death of her mother. Later, “it was Stella who lifted the canopy again” (Woolf 95). It was hard to cope with the loss and absence, and Virginia’s mental health started a trip from the opposition of excitement to depression. Her mental dependence on the events of her life made her write: “I am hardly aware of myself, but only of the sensation. I am only the container of the feeling of ecstasy, of the feeling of rapture.”
Apart from growing up near the most remarkable representatives of the Victorian era, Virginia Wolf’s adulthood was closely connected to the changes in the cultural life of London. After the death of her father, she moved to Bloomsbury together with her brother and sister. There, she joined Bloomsbury Group famous for absence of any conventions and radical minds. She was able to sharpen her wits with E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, Clive Bell, and others who were passionate about philosophy and literature, particularly about the works of G. E. Moore (McNeillie 13). Being a sparkling talker, Virginia Woolf challenged many of her peers. Naturally, her social life was greatly transformed due to the presence of Bloomsbury Group in her life. In 1912, Virginia Woolf got married to one of the members of Bloomsbury, Leonardo Woolf. In the death note, Virginia described their marriage as the happiest moments of her life (Atlas). Not only did Leonard Woolf support her mental health during many years, but he also followed her pursuit for looking deeper than was offered by routine. Unfortunately, due to the fragile perception of the world, Virginia Woolf was not able to sustain bombing of London 1940 and 1941. Her life could be described as entirely uncontrolled flow of emotions and memories which made Virginia Woolf a decent writer of her time.
Virginia Woolf’s elegant and very often nonlinear language vibrates smoothly in the diversity of her written heritage. The invention of her own style was regarded as a simple rhythm by the writer. She mentions that rhythm “goes far deeper than words” (Woolf). It created a wave in mind based on the emotions and feelings. This wave turned into the well-structured moments of soul’s talk. For Virginia Woolf, it was extremely vital to preserve soul and rhythm while using the words. Traditional writers found it hard to understand the stories of Virginia Woolf because she was sketching her moods, psychological conditions and the process of looking for the truth without describing the exact time, place, and plot. It was her way of writing poems in prose. Lorraine Sim highlights that Virginia Woolf talked to the audience in this pattern in order to show that all usual conventions were in the past, and the present style should have focused on important things, in particular life (Sim 8). Due to the fact that the degree to which Woolf shares her inner soul is remarkably insightful, her works are considered to be an excellent example of ‘stream of conscious’. Actually, her conscious mind was inspired by various things which were captured in the light manner of memory recollection (Sim 115).
At the age of nine, she started contributing to a family newspaper. In the Hyde Park Gate New, Virginia Woolf wrote the small stories about family members. From that point on, she spent hours on end mastering her reflections through the writing skills. Very often Woolf shared her insights in the private letters. She regarded them as an important part of her life as she was able to share her thoughts with people she adored and respected. Nowadays, her letters are gathered in six volumes. What is important is that they reveal the life of the finest author of modernism. A passionate heart of Virginia Woolf could be seen from the relationship she followed in her correspondence. The habit of writing a journal was coined in 1897. Woolf perceived this tradition as “far more necessary than anything else” (Woolf 73). The fragments of her life appear spontaneously on the paper. She refused to have her memories written according to the agenda. What mattered was the ability to reflect on important things exactly when it was felt the most.
Virginia Woolf’s famous novels were filled with the characters and moods from real life. The first published novel, The Voyage Out, initially Melymbrosia, invites the audience to question whether they really know the meaning of ordinary life (Sim 57). The fact that people perceive the world without thinking and looking deeper at the nature of things, such as “class, politics, and suffrage” challenges Virginia Woolf to capture the practical motions and change them into aesthetic beauty (Reid). In other novels, she keeps evoking her childhood memories and transmitting actual events from ordinary life. For example, she magnifies the grief of Thoby’s death through the novel In Jacob’s Room. To the Lighthouse is the novel devoted to the anniversary of mother’s death. Not only does Virginia Woolf recollect summer memories from the past, but she also links the ordinary picture to the most significant memory of her mother. Woolf’s commitment to her aesthetic perception of the world found its ground in other novels as well. She is famous for writing Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves, Three Guineas, and multitude of other novels and essays. In her diary, she mentions that she is eager not to be stereotyped. In fact, she had never really been.
Virginia Woolf belongs to the modernist authors who have a profound influence on the development of British literature history. The content of her works, letters, and notes is steeped in the perception of ordinary events and important memories that took place in her life. Growing up in the culture-oriented family, Virginia Woolf had an opportunity to master her writing skills, improve her imagination, and set own principals of woman’s role in society. Her life was full of totally different events which provoked opposite emotions. This constant change from excitement to grief resulted in the series of nervous breakdowns. Between them, Woolf was willing to teach her audience how to perceive the ordinary life and go beyond traditional forms. Her works, including the most popular ones, such as To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves, are known for the special rhythm that Virginia Woolf was cultivating with light and peace. Nowadays, she is still regarded as the greatest thinker of the 20th century.
Works Cites
Atlas, James. “Bloomsbury: Last Letters.” The New York Times. 5 Oct. 1980. Web. 12 Feb. 2016.
McNeillie, Andrew. “Bloomsbury.” The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf. Ed. Sue Roe, Susan Sellers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 1-29. Print.
Orr, Douglas W. Virginia Woolf’s Illnesses. Ed. Wayne K. Chapman. Clemson: Clemson University Digital Press. Web. 12 Feb. 2016.
Reid, Panthea. “Virginia Woolf. British Writer.” Britannica. Web. 12 Feb. 2016.
Sim, Lorraine. Virginia Woolf: The Patterns of Ordinary Experience. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2010. Google Book Search. Web. 12 Feb. 2016.
Woolf, Virginia. A Writer's Diary. Ed. Leonard Woolf. New York: A Harvest Book. Harcourt, Inc. Google Book Search. Web. 12 Feb. 2016.
---. Moments of Being. Ed. Jeanne Schulkind. New York: A Harvest Book. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1985. Print.
